


Hartley Rathaway and the No Good, Terrible, Awful Morning

by kitkatt0430



Series: Work In Progress Bingo [6]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explosions, Getting Together, Hartley's day starts with a bang, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Past Relationship(s), Sort Of, alternate season 3, i think, its AU alright??, unless it's really alternate season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27152557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430
Summary: And the much better, awesome, wonderful afternoon...
Relationships: Cisco Ramon/Hartley Rathaway
Series: Work In Progress Bingo [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977097
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Hartley Rathaway and the No Good, Terrible, Awful Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This was just the scene at STAR Labs in my WIP folder. Rediscovering and expanding on that scene was a lot of fun. :D

Hartley wakes up, rolls over, smacks his alarm's off button, and then swears. Because he was aiming for the sleep bar.

Not that he'd have been able to rest for those ten minutes before the alarm triggered again. Because his neighbors alarm clocks started going off all around the same time too. He just lays there, trying to figure out why he feels so miserable, and finally concludes he's got a headache already.

Sitting up, Hartley looks at his phone and seriously considers calling in sick. He does not call in sick, however. He makes himself get out of bed, take some Tylenol, and gets in the shower. He spends more time than usual just standing under the water flow, letting it hit his shoulders and his back, which was feeling kind of achy this morning. (His mattress sucked; he really needed to add some kind of cushy topper to it.) By the time he cut the water, Hartley was feeling awake and human enough to drive into work. So he finished getting ready for the day and headed into work.

Which he almost immediately came to regret.

McIntyre had the lab next door to Hartley's office and an unfortunate habit of singing - wildly off key - all day long. But today, McIntyre wasn't singing. He was... showing off. There was someone in the lab with him. A giggling someone who really needed a better sense of humor because McIntyre was incapable of being funny, despite the man's many attempts. Then there was a crashing noise and the sound of... no. No he wasn't.

Swearing under his breath, Hartley stormed out of his office and peered through the window on the door to McIntyre's office. The man had hoisted a blond woman onto a lab table and was making out with her.

Hartley swore again and went back to his office to call the front desk. "Hey Jean, McIntyre's got a guest with him today. What level visitors clearance was she given?"

There was another crash and Hartley internally prayed they weren't about to have sex. There were some things he didn't need to hear at work for the sake of his sanity.

"Public areas only," Jean responded, sounding puzzled. "Why?"

"He took her into his lab. And it doesn't sound like a business meeting," Hartley sighed and thanked Jean before hanging up and heading back out of his office. He walked down the hall until the sounds of two mouths mushing up against each other were blocked out by the sounds of actual work. Which took him all the way to the stairwell. Settling on the steps, Hartley cradled his head in his hands. Okay, so what did he do in this situation. McIntyre had a guest in his lab who didn't belong. Probably his girlfriend - wasn't McIntyre married? That was not his wife. His wife was not blonde. - and they were breaking things in their eagerness to make out. Or... nope. Hartley wasn't letting his brain go there.

Did he go to security or just straight to Dr. McGee?

After a few moments deliberation, Hartley decided he'd make it Tina's problem and headed upstairs to her office. Unfortunately he'd no sooner walked into Dr. McGee's office than an explosion rocked the building.

It came from McIntyre's lab.

* * *

Hartley's office is on fire and Tina has to haul him back to the stairwell by the back of his shirt. His wallet, his keys, his phone... they're all still inside.

McIntyre and his girlfriend are just fine. They knocked over the wrong thing in their eagerness and got out of the room right before it went BOOM!

"You can't kill him," Dr. McGee tells Hartley, latching on to the back of his shirt again. 

"Don't be so sure," Hartley muttered darkly, glowering at McIntyre. "I could definitely strangle him right now."

"Not before I get to fire him."

"And set him on fire?" Hartley asked hopefully, shrugging when Tina raised an eyebrow at him.

There was, of course, a flash of lightning that streaked past them into the building. And Hartley couldn't even call Cisco to relay a request to Barry to retrieve at minimum his keys because, well... his phone was in his office.

What a day.

"I want to go home," Hartley muttered.

"You can go home after the firemen say we can leave," Tina assured him.

"My keys - my car key and my apartment key - are in my office," Hartley replied.

"Oh. I have a guest room if worst comes to worst," she sighed.

"Thanks. Think I can guilt Barry into grabbing them for me?"

"Probably. I'm going to go fire McIntyre." Tina walked off and Hartley scowled at the man in question.

Why did Tina get to have all the fun?

Which was when the firemen finally arrived and Hartley spied Chip. His ex-boyfriend Chip. Ex-boyfriend Chip who'd dumped Hartley because he claimed he thought Hartley was cheating on him with Harrison. Hartley hadn't been cheating on Chip with anyone - though he'd fully admit to having a bit of a crush on Harrison at the time. Chip, on the other hand, had actually been cheating on Hartley with one of his fellow firemen. He'd just been looking for an excuse to break up with Hartley without looking like the bad guy himself.

Chip was now married to the guy he'd cheated on Hartley with. They'd adopted a kid together.

With any luck Hartley could just... avoid the guy. Gracefully.

* * *

He does not get to avoid Chip. Gracefully or otherwise. Oh no. Barry puts out the fire singlehandedly, meaning the firemen are mostly standing around looking pretty.

(Very, very pretty. Hartley happily ogles a few of the newbies in the squad and is reminded of what drew him to Chip in the first place. Hot men in attractive red suits. It was what made being carried around by Barry in his Flash suit such a lovely memory too.)

It turns out Chip is in the middle of a nasty divorce for cheating on his husband and was going through a nasty custody battle. Or so said one of his coworkers, who clearly remembered Hartley and the way Chip had treated him. Jack waited until Chip had stomped off to give Hartley the latest gossip.

"Thanks Jack."

"He's an ass and deserves what he gets. How've you been, Hartley?"

"I've been better," Hartley sighed. "My office is the one that moron McIntyre set on fire."

"And then to have to deal with Chip on top of that. My condolences." Jack patted his shoulder. "Anything you need from your office? I can see about getting it for you."

"Keys, wallet, cell phone. They should all be in the top drawer, right hand side, of my desk."

"You got it." Jack headed over to talk to the Flash and, well, that was more efficient than asking Barry himself.

A few seconds later, the Flash was in front of Hartley with the requested items and Hartley could just... go home now. Except... the firetruck was blocking the exit to the parking lot Hartley was parked in.

Dammit.

Oh well. He could sit in his car and read on his phone, assuming it hadn't overheated and died.

It wasn't even lunch time yet.

* * *

By the time Hartley dropped into the first empty chair he spotted in the STAR Labs cortex, he'd been to Big Belly Burger and had to correct his order twice. Once at the register when he ordered a number 2 and the guy register wasn't paying attention and rung him up for a number 5 instead. And then at his table when the waiter brought him the order for another table. (Did he look like he'd ordered four meals? If it had been a to go order, he might've understood the mix up, but it wasn't to go.)

"What the hell is this day?" Hartley complained, rolling the chair over to the desk next to Cisco and dropping his face into his arms atop the desk where Team Flash's command center was run.

"I heard about the explosion. Sorry about your office," Cisco offered. "Are you okay?"

"I'm gonna murder McIntyre," Hartley declared, muffled by his arms.

Cisco just laughed at him.

"You laugh, but I'll do it," Hartley grumbled. "I'm way more vicious than Caitlin's alter ego."

Predictably, there was a swat to his shoulders. "Don't joke about that."

"Then again, Caitlin's more vicious than her alter ego." Hartley tilted his head to the side and looked over at Cisco. "Come on, don't tell me she didn't plot my death a few times while I was still working here."

"Plotting is a strong word. She might have been restrained from going after your jugular with a sharpened pencil a few times... but plotting. Well. That implies premeditation would have been involved." Cisco grinned impishly as Hartley sat up just long enough to stick his tongue out at the engineer.

As Hartley laid his head back down, another person entered the cortex. Cute guy, blond... had to be Julian Albert, the world's grumpiest CSI that Hartley'd been hearing about lately. Hartley waved absently at the guy. "Hi, I'm Hartley. I'd introduce myself properly, but I'm having a shitty day."

"Julian. Sorry about your day."

"Thanks. If next you see me in handcuffs at the station it's because I've murdered my former coworker. Who was just fired for blowing up his lab and setting my office on fire."

Cisco swatted Hartley again. "You're not killing him. Letting him live with his own idiocy is a far worse punishment."

"Underrated. But fair point." Hartley sighed and sat up, stretching and rolling his neck and shoulders.

"So, you used to work here, right?" Julian asked, sounding curious.

"Oh, yeah. We hated each other," Hartley gestured between himself and Cisco, who nodded far more enthusiastically than that statement deserved, "and annoyed Caitlin and Ronnie who had to referee us so that we didn't permanently mentally scar the interns with our constant bickering. But at least I never had to worry about the competency of your work or the possibility of you blowing up the office."

"Yeah, turned out that was more Dr. Wells' area than ours," Cisco replied blandly.

Hartley snickered. "That shouldn't be funny. Why is that funny?"

"You've had a traumatic morning," Cisco informed him solemnly.

"McIntyre brought his girlfriend to work today," Hartley said. "Got her a visitors pass, snuck her into his lab - not covered by the pass - and started making out with her. Which, since I could hear them - and he fucking well knows I'm a meta with enhanced hearing so fuck him - I was already traumatized by that experience. When I went to report him, that's when they managed to knock over something that then exploded. I don't want to even know how that happened. They're fine, not that I care. McIntyre's wife had better divorce his ass over all this."

Cisco was snickering again. Julian looked fairly amused too.

"And then, to add insult to injury, my ex is a firefighter. So while Dr. McGee is getting to have fun firing McIntyre and, sadly, not setting him on fire, I get to be harassed by Chip."

"Chip who cheated on you?" Cisco asked.

Hartley blinked in surprise. "I honestly didn't realize you knew that. But yes. That asshole. I thought that if I was polite, then maybe he'd be polite too, and we could pretend we were both capable of acting like adults. Nope. Not even close."

"What did he say?"

"I wouldn't repeat it in impolite company. And I'm pretty sure this counts as at least semi-polite, if not actually polite company. So... no." Hartley grinned while Cisco snickered. "But apparently he is definitely going through a divorce because he's still a cheater. So at least something brightened my day. Well, also Dr. McGee gave me the rest of the week off while my office is being repaired so I don't feel instantly homicidal every morning when I see the charred wall and burnt artwork."

"Good. You really need to remember 'be gay, do crime' is a catchy meme and not actual life advice."

Hartley stuck his tongue out at Cisco again.

"So what would it take to turn today around into an actual good day for you?" Julian asked.

"Uh... I dunno. Smoking hot guy asks me out on a date?" Hartley shrugged. "That'd be a nice start, anyway."

"Um..." Cisco's whole demeanor changed, turning nervous. "Like, I don't know about smoking hot, but... would you want to go to dinner with me? Tonight?"

"Are you... asking me on a date?" Hartley asked, suddenly rather nervous himself. Hopeful, but so much anxiety too.

"Yes? I mean, yes. A date." Cisco nodded sharply and smiled hesitantly.

"I'd love to," Hartley breathed out, scarcely able to believe this was happening.

An alarm went off on Cisco's phone. "I've got to check on something in my lab, but then I will be back and we can decide on dinner. Don't go anywhere," and then Cisco was rushing off. Then he came back in, grabbed his phone, shut off the alarm, and ran out again.

"That... that just happened, right?" Hartley turned to Julian with an intense look. "Tell me that just happened."

"Cisco asked you out on a date," Julian confirmed.

Hartley grinned brightly and made a happy noise, spinning his chair around excitedly. "Yes!!!!!"

Incredulously, Julian muttered, "and you two seriously used to hate each other?"

A blur of yellow lightning entered the room as Barry finally showed up to put his suit back on the dummy in what Hartley liked to call the Flash shrine. "Oh, hey, you're in a surprisingly good mood," Barry observed. "I guess your day is looking up, Hartley?"

"Cisco asked me on a date," Hartley confirmed spinning around again. His cheeks already hurt from smiling so widely. But he had a date with a smoking hot guy. 

"About time," Barry said cheerfully. 

"Did they really used to hate each other?" Julian asked plaintively.

"Yeah, it was hilarious," Barry confirmed.

Hartley just tuned them out, inordinately pleased with his day now. He had a date with Cisco. Today was wonderful.


End file.
